Douglasss Comments on Gerrit Smiths Address This essay was written in 1849 and so records Douglasss views before

he wrote the essays we have been studying which appeared in 1857 and 1860. (On Dred Scott and on the Constitution delivered in Glasgow.) The difference between the 1849 essay and the later essays is of course that in the 1849 essay Douglass still holds the Garrisonian view of the Constitution while in the later essays he has abandoned and rejected that view. I am going back to the earlier essay because it raises some interesting issues about the government and the constitution. The issue very briefly is this: In the address Douglass is commenting on Gerrit Smith maintained that the constitution is not pro-slavery, but that even if it were it would be perfectly all right for the government to make slavery illegal. Douglass strongly disagrees. He is all for making slavery illegal, but he argues that it does not follow that any old way of making slavery illegal is all right. There are right and wrong ways to make slavery illegal and we must not use the wrong ways. He says that the Christian principle is firmly fixed in his heart that it is wrong to do evil that good may come; and if there is one heresy more to be guarded against than another, it is the doctrine that the end justifies the means. 140.2. He implies for example that it would be wrong to invoke foreign arms to abolish slavery even if that means would be successful. 140.2. We may agree with Douglass that the end does not justify the means but still ask why it would be wrong, as he seems to believe, for candidates for office to get elected and then to make laws to make slavery illegal. What is his argument? His argument seems to be this: if a person gets elected under the Constitution he must swear to uphold the Constitution. But if he swears to do this he is obliged to do his best to see to it that the principles of the Constitution remain it force, which means that he would act wrongly if he made laws to make slavery illegal. Notice that on this reasoning it is

also wrong to vote under the Constitution for in doing so one is helping to appoint people to government who must swear to uphold the Constitution and therefore to uphold slavery. If one believes with the Garrisonians that the Constitution is pro-slavery the only thing one can honorably do is to disclaim all allegiance to the Constitution and in particular one must refuse to vote under it. This argument seems highly questionable. The problem is this: one is not obliged to do what one has sworn to do, if what one has sworn to do is wrong. Suppose that I swear to help you commit a murder. Am I now obligated to help you commit murder!? Surely not. If I come to my senses and refuse to help you it would be absurd for you to say to me: you swore to help me, so now you must. If we were arrested it surely would not help me to say, Well I swore to help him. So I had to, I was obliged to. The judge would still condemn me. Does it change matters to say that the case at hand is different from the one I just described? In that case when I swore to help you to commit murder I intended to help you (presumably). Only later did I come to my senses. In the case at hand Gerrit Smith seems to be urging abolitionist politicians to swear falsely, that is, to swear to uphold the Constitution all the while intending to do the opposite, and that this is wrong for a politician or anyone to do. In that case the wrongness would not be in outlawing slavery, but in swearing to uphold slavery intending all the while to abolish slavery. Would it make a difference if the politician was up front about it? If he said while he was politicking and trying to win votes that he was going to abolish slavery and thus fail to uphold the Constitution if he was elected? What do you think? Whatever your view it seems that Douglass does not leave it at this, namely, that the end does not justify the means. He has another argument. It is to the effect that this suggestion of Gerrit Smith would lead to all the horrors of anarchy and all the confusion of Babel. 138.3. What does he mean?

His idea seems to be this: Gerrit Smith doctrine makes the government superior to and independent of the Constitution, which is the very charter of the government and without which the government is nothing better than a lawless mob acting without any other or higher authority than its own convictions or impulses as to what is right or wrong. 138.2. This seems to suggest that there cannot be a government with authority (that is a right to make laws) unless that government is obligated to follow or obey a constitution. And he seems to have in mind a written constitution. He writes: Among the causes which have convulsed and revolutionized Europe during the past year, none has been more prominent or effective than the want and rational desire of the people for Constitutional government-not an unwritten, but a written Constitution, accurately defining the powers of government. 138.3. Notice that this philosophy is based on the philosophy of the Declaration. According to the Declaration human beings have various rights and governments are instituted to secure these rights deriving their powers from the consent of the people they govern. If they fail to do so the people are entitled to throw off their government and make another one that better secures their rights. The difference is that Jefferson does not insist on a written constitution that government must obey. The constitution he gestures to is unwritten or barely written with very few details, it says simply that people have certain unalienable rights and that among these are the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The appeal is obviously to certain natural rights and natural laws. Jefferson did not go into any further details probably because the exact nature of these rights and laws are somewhat controversial. Still one can sympathize with the view expressed by Douglass that the people might want a more detailed and precise account of exactly what powers they are giving over to government. On the other hand notice that the written U.S. Constitution is careful to indicate that the rights listed in the Bill of Rights are not to be thought of as exhausting the rights claimed by the people.

To get back to Douglass, what do you think of his claim or suggestion that unless government has a constitution it is obligated to follow then it is nothing better than a lawless mobacting on its own convictions or impulses as to what is right or wrong. And his claim that without a written constitution government will merely be the voice of an ever-shifting majority, be that good or evil. 138.2. On this account the constitution puts certain limits on the government. It limits what the government is entitled to do. In particular it puts limits on what laws the government might make even if the majority wills that it make them. If the government were simply the will of a majority for example in a democracy it might make and execute any laws that the majority want it to make. It may make and execute laws that persecute a minority. A properly constructed constitution may prevent it from making such laws- even if the majority wills it.